Official website: https://lsp.dec.ens.fr/en/news/human-auditory-ecology-new-interdisciplinary-field-17557
Organizing committee : Jérôme Sueur (MNHN, France) and Christian Lorenzi (ENS-PSL)
The aim of these interdisciplinary colloquia, organized as part of a partnership between the Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle and the Ecole normale supérieure (Université PSL), is to promote the scientific study of the human auditory system’s ability to perceive ecological processes at work in natural habitats, by confronting hearing sciences (psychoacoustics, auditory neuroscience, bioacoustics, audiology) with the tools, data, concepts and theories of soundscape ecology and eco-acoustics. The aim of the symposium is also to encourage specialists in human and non-human hearing to consider recent work in human geography and geosciences, and to examine the implications of this work for experimental and clinical audiology and, more generally, for human health and understanding environmental change in our societies.
Relying on large-scale acoustic databases with high ecological validity, these new programs are designed to study the extent to which the probably ancestral monitoring functions of the human auditory system are adapted to the specific information conveyed by natural soundscapes, whether they function throughout life, or whether they emerge through individual learning or cultural transmission. Over and above the fundamental knowledge of human hearing that they will be able to provide, these new programs should enable a better understanding of how hearing and hearing-impaired people listen to and benefit from green and blue spaces, and whether rehabilitation devices (hearing aids and hearing aids) can be used to improve hearing quality.
An initial workshop to lay the foundations for the new field of Human Auditory Ecology (HAE 2024) was co-organised by ENS-PSL and MNHN in March 2024 at the exceptional Biosphere 2 research station in Tucson, Arizona, in close partnership with IRL iGlobes CNRS, ENS-PSL and the University of Arizona.
The general aim of this second workshop that will take place at Museum national d’Histoire naturelle (MNHN) and Ecole normale supérieure (ENS) in Paris on March 31st 2025 and April 1st 2025 is to refine the foundations of Human Auditory Ecology by combining work carried out in soundscape Ecology and eco-acoustics and hearing sciences, and increasing mutual awareness between each of the two scientific communities.
Discussions on March 31 2025 at MNHN and April 1st 2025 at ENS should address the following questions: Can we hear “ecological processes” underlying natural habitats and ecosystems (i.e., the processes responsible for the dynamics and functions of ecological systems at multiple spatial and temporal scales) ? If so, how do we hear such ecological processes ?